Welcome to Hyperion Records, an independent British classical label devoted to presenting high-quality recordings of music of all styles and from all periods from the twelfth century to the twenty-first.

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Five Am'rous Sighs

Introduction

Published in 2001, Five Am’rous Sighs evokes eighteenth-century metropolitan life in settings of poems by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Matthew Prior. For a singer like me, more used to dead composers than living ones, it was a great pleasure to give the first public performance of this gorgeous piece in the presence of its composer in that first London Pride performance at the Spitalfields Festival.

Recordings

'Bott can transform herself from robust campanologist in Walton's Rhyme to high camp in Kit and the Widow's irresistible Wimbledon Idyll ...'Listen to what Bott and Norris make of the Gershwin standard A Foggy Day and you'll believe that the age of miracles hasn't passed!' (Internat ...» More

Details

Between your sheets you soundly sleep Nor dream of Vigils that we Lovers keep While all the night, I waking sigh your name, The tender sound does ev’ry nerve inflame, Imagination shows me all your charms, The plenteous silken hair and waxen Arms, The well-turn’d neck, and snowy rising breast And all the beauties that supinely rest Between your sheets.

Ah Lindamira, could you see my Heart, How fond, how true, how free from fraudfull Art, The warmest glances poorly doe explain The eager wish, the melting throbbing pain, Which through my very blood and soul I feel, Which you cannot believe, nor I reveal, Which ev’ry metaphor must render less And yet (methinks) which I could well express Between your sheets.

Finish! Finish, these Languours make me sick, Of dying airs I know the Trick, Long since I’ve learnt to well explain Th’unmeaning cant of Fire and Pain And see through all the senseless Lyes Of burning darts from killing Eyes, I’m tired with this continual Rout Of bowing low and leading out. Finish! Finish this tedious dangling Trade By which so many Fools are made, For Fools they are, who you can please With such affected arts as these. At Operas to stand And slyly press the given hand, Thus you may wait whole years in vain, But sure you would, were you in pain, Finish.